Bloom Box

Did you all see the piece on TV about the "BLOOM BOX"?
I got so excieted! Major corporations seems to be having great interest and are using it.
I went to their website (www.bloomenergy.com) to see what was available for home use.
Boo-hoo...not yet.
Further I am not sure if this is just another "saving" thing although they did talk a small amount about it can be used for off the grid use.

LFIRE wrote:
Did you all see the piece on TV about the "BLOOM BOX"?
I got so excieted! Major corporations seems to be having great interest and are using it.
I went to their website (www.bloomenergy.com) to see what was available for home use.
Boo-hoo...not yet.
Further I am not sure if this is just another "saving" thing although they did talk a small amount about it can be used for off the grid use.

Each cell gives about 25w, these are put together in "stacks", a few stacks (size of a bread loaf) is enough to power a home... but instead they put enough together to generate 100kw... much more than anyone could use on their own. It runs on CH[sub]4[/sub] and (though they very carefully don't say so)... solid oxide plates. Because there are 400 of them... and they are quite small... I would suggest that once the oxide plates are used up, the stacks are replaced (recycled). The data sheet does not say how long these oxide sheets last... in fact there is no TTL (or half life or whatever) at all listed.

I would assume that there is a minimum size where this thing is self sustaining. Where it's generated heat is enough to supply it's own heat requirements. It appears this is a utility size device. The inverter could be down sized easy enough, but I expect the fuel supplying, steam supply/recycle etc. needs to be a certain size to be economical. The amount of info on their site is dismal ... however, if they get commonplace enough the price of "stacks" might be low enough for home use. biogas could be used for fuel and solar heat could be enough supplement to make things work. It will be a few years yet before we know unless they start making smaller units.

the solid oxide plates are catalytic

the tech here is fuel cell fueled by natural gas, a good idea but not realy useful in terms of replacing infrastructure because it just replaces electric lines with natural gas lines

Brice Moss wrote:
the solid oxide plates are catalytic

So compressed air is added too? It was not listed in the inputs section and my knowledge of fuel cells is not good enough to figure it out from what they show... which is not much.

the tech here is fuel cell fueled by natural gas, a good idea but not realy useful in terms of replacing infrastructure because it just replaces electric lines with natural gas lines

Biogas would work and can be made on the homestead from biowaste (if one believes there is such a thing as waste).. doesn't look like wood gas would work though.

If the tech will scale down small enough for single  household use is doubtful most fuel cells require pretty high temps to operate keeping a small scale set hot enough to work wastes a lot of power.

great 60minutes segment i think in feb. 2009.  the commercial application is now available for $70K, so if you are powering a school, local gov. bldg, senior home, you will save BIG on energy costs.  alot of the dotcom companies in the bay area have them; i think that google or yahoo may have been the first.  very low maintenance and virtually free energy once you start the process?  many skeptics believe the reason that the home application is presently being stalled is that this technology will KILL solar and wind, which is just gaining momentum (and does not "deserve" to die?).  cost is $3K.  there were rumors  (and fears) that GE was going to buy the rights to the bloombox, then kill it.  the inventor (at least of the cheaper materials to make it cheap) is from the country of india.  alot of the newagers believe in the prophesy that in 2012 a huge global change will come out of india.  coincidence? 

and how about that recent solar advance at MIT, where they developed a solar cell the size of a leaf in 1 gallon of water that will power one home.  that is supposedly being marketed by a company in india and in on track to be available by next year.  unless something else happens...

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/28/mit-professor-touts-first-practical-artificial-leaf-signs-dea/

yeah it'll be a long time before that kind of hi-tech stuff rolls down to the single homeowner.  Better chance for community developers to be early adopters in the residential market.  Just not enough profit margins.

I'm hoping that we can somehow get the hybrid and all-electric car batteries that will be swapped out when they get to the knee of the curve (80%?) and use them for off-grid storage... but I have a feeling that Detroit will make sure they get those babies back. 
I find it interesting that Amory Lovins in his RMi (www.rmi.org) hdqtrs uses Chinese submarine batteries... and he has access to all that hi-tech stuff like bloom boxes and Stirling engines.